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Thursday, October 4, 2018

I love working with other creatives for one simple reason:I always end up learning so much.As a freelance artist, it can be easy to alienate yourself and close yourself off from interactions with other artists (or people in general).Many freelancers work from home and spend long hours in the studio creating, so it makes sense that there would be little interaction or community among freelancers as a whole.If nothing else, a collaborative project can shake things up and get you thinking in new ways, and in my experience these are the kinds of activities that spur creative growth as an artist.

As fashion month was approaching this year, I was fawning over Scott W. Mason’s Instagram page and thinking how amazing our work would be side by side.I mentioned a fashion week collaboration and of course it became a month long affair.Scott’s work is so chic and effortless - he can make the most mundane look into a crazy cool pose with structural forms and dramatic brushstrokes.I think of my work as the exact opposite:very overthought and tight lipped, and I’m on a mission to loosen up a bit.My month painting with Scott has helped me do just that and I couldn’t be more thankful.

S: I would say minimal, abstract but playful... It’s hard to describe your own style as I find everyone looking at it takes away something a bit different. I like to suggest things rather than depict the entire scene so people viewing will fill in the blanks, combining that with a strong linear line to highlight key parts of the garment I’m illustrating and then a whole lot of paint strokes to add some fun.

D: My style is a semi-realistic, colorful and fun celebration of fashion and beauty.Having said that, I am pushing myself to become more expressive with my brushstrokes to create more personality in each piece.For this project I tried experimenting with layering different mediums over my original pencil sketch.Each one is different and was a learning experience for me, with I love.

S: It was interesting to see, given full scope of an entire fashion week what looks we as illustrators are drawn to individually. I’ve also learnt that two styles, though on the surface completely polar opposites work really well together, so that’s an interesting thing to keep in mind whilst working in future, just because they’re different doesn’t mean they don’t compliment one another!

D: I remain fascinated with how Scott chooses his subjects and I learned right off the bat that we’re attracted to very different things in an inspiration look.I tend to think of pieces in terms of how well I would be able to illustrate a print or embellishment and working with Scott I was really able to let go of that and try something new.I enjoyed the weeks that he chose the image most and I hope I can replicate that for myself in the future wth more daring and interesting choices.

S: Hmmm there were a few that stood out, I only ever look at a collection from an illustrating point of view so this is based purely on whether I want to illustrate more of their looks or not but I would say Richard Quinn, I used to shy away from print so much, mainly me being lazy but the theatrics and prints used in his show are incredible and there’s not one look he put on that runway that I wouldn’t enjoy illustrating.

D: Richard Quinn was amazing and I will definitely be going back for more!My absolute favorite collection overall would have to be Valentino but I’m very excited to illustrate looks from Marc Jacobs and Dries Van Noten.

A HUGE thank you to Scott W. Mason for doing this collaboration with me!